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Posted on 09.19.09 by evrwrldBB @ 11:15 pm
Comments on this: 30 so far. Add your own.  Harry is startled by the arrival of the Verizon Guy and his support army Before I start with this, don't get me wrong, I love magic, and I love Harry Potter, I'd love to live in that universe, and as soon as they open that theme park, I'm there. However when I rolled out of the theatre after watching that Half-Blood Prince movie, I had a burning desire to live in the HP universe, if only for my fool proof get rich quick scheme: hocking cell phones to wizards. I see that look you're giving me, and I know it sounds like I'm the tool in the back of the movie who's talking about how magic is "lame" but hear me out here: there is nothing that the wizarding world can offer that can compete with a simple, honest cell phone. Think about it: you've gotten that letter to Hogwarts you've wanted since you read Book One and you're off to Hogwarts. When the wizard kids want to talk to their folks what do they have to do while you pick up your phone? Well, they can write a letter, climb seventy or so flights of stairs to climb up to the owl loft, avoid being nipped by the bird as they tie the letter (very securely) to the creature's leg, or put an envelope in its beak, then send it off. They'll have their reply in three or four days. Option B, they can grab a handful of Floo Powder and cram their head in a fireplace! Doesn't that sound delightful? I sure hope mom and dad are home cause otherwise they've just gotten a face full of ash for nothing. Meanwhile you've called your mom, dad, sister, cousin, aunt, friend from high school all with total privacy. Categorized as: Rants
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Posted on 06.25.09 by Dom @ 8:40 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  German minister of family affairs, Ursula von der Leyen Quick note from Widge: One of the best things about having international contributors is we can get info from people who are "on the ground" where stuff is actually happening. So Dom decided to send us his take on the recent news about Germany and their bright idea of internet censorship. I'd rather be fighting Zombies. Or windmills. Or even zombie windmills. I should have known. Really. When--out of the fear of cyber-criminals and hackers--the German government passed a law that declared the development and usage of software that is aimed at testing the security of networks and computer systems, I should have known. This law, if "interpreted" like some people read the Bible, makes it practically illegal to ping a network and makes it illegal for software companies in Germany to produce security testing software. Nice one. Can I still use "ping"? I have the feeling I can not. As so many really silly laws though, this one never really was a problem because the police neither has the means nor the knowledge to hunt hackers or sysadmins. It would make for some great comedy though. "Put down the mouse! Don't you dare start that brute force attack!" - "I have a port listener and I am going to use it!" Categorized as: Rants
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Posted on 06.25.09 by HTQ4 @ 1:18 am
Comments on this: 5 so far. Add your own.  First of all, for the record, let me say that I have not seen the new Transformers sequel. I'm aware of the hype and I did see the first one. Thankfully, this is not a review of the new movie. It's a review of a couple of the reviews I've read for that movie. In the early, pre-dawn hours of the morning this morning, I rolled over and picked up my Blackberry to catch a glimpse of the headlines. There's always something there that will help lock your eyeballs open for the day. This day, it was the absolute idiocy of a couple of movie reviews that was able to get me from the bed to the coffee pot. The first review I read was by Tom Charity on CNN.com. The second was by Joe Morgenstern on the Wall Street Journal Online. Categorized as: Rants
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Posted on 04.13.09 by Widge @ 9:52 pm
Comments on this: just one. Add your own.  Hey, look on the bright side: I bet you got Super Saver Shipping on that. So my previous rant regarding #AmazonFail garnered a lot of traffic. This appears to be the hot topic of the day as I figured it would be. I did state I would wait for official word from Amazon and to their credit, I did receive it--the same canned message they sent The New York Times: Hello, Thank you for contacting Amazon.com. This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search. Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future. Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon. Categorized as: Rants
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Posted on 04.12.09 by Widge @ 11:34 pm
Comments on this: 11 so far. Add your own.  So I'm not going to write directly about the running debacle that is #AmazonFail yet (get your primers here and here). For two reasons. One, because I submitted a request to Amazon for a response and I said I would give them until end of day tomorrow before I did a write-up. And I think we'll get a better answer than "glitch" for this mess. Or we'd better. And two because somebody's put forward a very interesting theory that "glitch" could be a euphemism for. Right now, I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about what every company in the world needs to learn from #AmazonFail, whatever the reason turns out to be. I'm sure this will be a topic of great interest in business blogs, but you don't have to be a business expert or strategist or whatnot to know what happened here. The guy with the English degree can tell you. That's how plain it is. Categorized as: Rants
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